Anyone who says early adopters don't matter needs to go back to business school. Facebook and Twitter are beginning to impact brand recognition just as much as advertising.

- Inspired by Robert Scoble, Managing Director for FastCompany.TV

At least this "Big Idea" isn't negatively framed so I guess that I can personally call that progress, so I have come back here to acknowledge and welcome that as a hopeful trend and also in doing, demonstrate that writing online is about learning from ones own thoughts (even if its is via a pseudonym), rather than trying making a social impression or out of financial motivation. Yet this "Big Idea" still features the "Brian's" of the Internet. "Brian's" are my name for the opposite of "Brains", and Brian is the character featured in the Monty Python movie, the "Life of Brian" - where there is a particular moment in it where Brian loses his shoe. The "Brian's" of the internet are all those sites which are principally created for people who follow the shoe and who hold up the shoe to claim that this is what social media is, that consequentially that the shoe of the internet is the "Brian". (Of course Brian is a great parody - but then Eddie Murphy also starred in a movie call "G." - so go figure what that means). There is however, if one can get past the mainstream Brian's of the internet such as Twitter and Facebook, a undiscovered plethora of interesting places that do represent the heart and soul of what social media should be (at least in the opinion of someone who cannot relate to Brian sites). I have never signed on to Facebook because I like to avoid crowds, spectators, third parties and narcs (a personal preference and not an expression of a thought leader or a wannabe style counselor). Yet I have an overwhelming admiration for Peter Thiel, I think what Thiel has managed to accomplish with his investments is profound as any mega-mortal can ever wish or hope to be, so I will never (and I mean NEVER) begrudge the profoundity of any proven and magnanimous, super-financed and media-mind blowing success (and that is why I also admire Mark Cuban). Personally I am still attracted to visit lots of smaller and even sponsored sites such "Internet Evolution", so long as such sites are fueled by myth-fighters but down-to-earth mindsets such as Nicole Ferraro, who is the site editor, but more so because "Internet Evolution" does not possess a e-dinosaur mindlock that thinks the internet is US-centric or treat the audience like a circulation ad rate card or those site that tries to "lock in their audience". (which is fine, for IMHO that is what Brian's have always done since the dawn of media time, or at least, ever since Hollywood invented pseudonyms for actors names to drive social acceptance around the "American Dream"). Such social shoe following is not going to end anytime soon, so I am not going to get down about it, so long as it is kept out of my face. Today on Internet Evolution they have a video on India (and also other countries), the Indian video ends with a great line "you cannot tell me that there is such a thing as 300 million niche market" - and even if the richest segment of these "niche" markets in India fuel more "Brian's" as the internet obviously scales there and around the world, the slum-dwellers featured in this Steven Saunder video speaks to a people who suddenly realize that they can find their own "Brains" (before of course money and austerity strip may them of any social sense that they may originally had) - and that is social networking or social media to me - because those people cannot be classified as social voyeurs, lame thinkers, blame merchants, negative nothings or finger pointers, but people who are genuinely looking at what the Internet can do for themselves and like most "lurkers" in America today, view it is a social resource rather than a social resort. The question for sites like FC is whether it wants to be a "Brian" or a "Brain" - and one visit to Internet Evolution (which is solely sponsored by IBM and is a part of a larger conglomerate media site), make it very clear, at least to me, that there is a massive distinction between the two. Getting back to this particular section at FC, after all what is the point of presenting a big idea if it doesn't lay a golden egg now and again - which is an even bigger idea. There is one thing when one personally feels that they have outgrown a place, but it is totally another thing of stupendous proportions, when social media makes it impossible to outgrow it - my "hope" then of course exists in the latter mindset of creating an internet for the "Brain's" (at least Google is trying to do that with Google Scholar), even if the general reality of scale will constantly or irrevocably still be dictated by the nature of the shoe and the scaling of "Brians". That actually isn't really a hope - for such hope is actually dictated by how one personally chooses to navigate the social riches that do exist here at FC and on the Internet. Having written four entries in a row at "Big Idea's", I will humbly and most excusably and personally shut the finklestein up, after all most people its seem want to read viewpoints rather than express it personally themselves (which still requires talent and not guts) and I also realize that this viewpoint is simply from a social sample set where N=1 and where the N will (at least in my case) always equal "1"......M.

Early adopters have greater influence now because the internet broadcasts their opinions earlier, with greater publicity, and with ostensible credibility.
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http://meadonmanhattan.wordpress.com/

I like Howard Freeman's use of the word "ostensible" because we do live in a world of appearances (this is a personal interpretation from my own limited view of life). Where I maybe differ is that I don't personally want to focus on the plot points of a technology lifecycle and I think that one has to define a life but which only serves to redefine a dictionary if others come to the same conclusion and thus compound meaning - (that is why the English Language constantly adapts to change - and why a dictionary to me is a mirror of an ever transforming world); so long as we don't abandon pathways that can bring us closer to a stable, mindful, heartfelt and fact based existence. Crossing the chasm as I see it is an internal challenge that is kind of Descartian. So what matters to me isn't the adoption of technology (which IMHO can have the consequence of turning the Descartian Split into a Descartian Chasm), but the personal adaptation of technology. Adaptation is therefore far more important in my book and much more personally consequential than adoption. At a personal level a lifecycle IMHO is about adaptation, for it is only in a mechanical universe that the lifecycle becomes adoption centric and all publicity therefore is something flying or coming at me - which is no longer a case of publish or perish, but perish in everybody elses publicity, which therefore ceases to actually serve me in an intelligent fashion. That any piece of technology can be imbued with such a powerful word as "life" simply suggests to me how intently focused we have led ourselves into a mechanical universe rather than waking our own selves up more to the biological aspects of the word "life", that idea isn't something new, Margaret Wheatley has been talking about that for ages. If I recognize the importance of adapting to technology then adoption surely becomes a no brainer, and then I guess progress truly becomes progressive. For in that moment , I have put myself in charge of the only lifecycle that really matters to me, not the chasm a technology vendor wants me to cross, but the unified mind and body that puts the word life back into the one "lifecycle" that I absolutely have to maintain well, my own life. Of course I am trying to understand the word "cycle" too at an equally personal level, and that can either becomes a freewheeling, society following choice of a ride towards the rat race or an individual exercise in innovative efficiency; where we begin to shape meaning out of the mechanical that surrounds us. To be able to handle that kind of transformation IMHO is an incredibly difficult personal challenge, because every new increment of publicity equates with more "attention", and IMHO we are drowning in attention until we start thinking for ourselves (but not become narcissistic about it!). If I am writing this principally for myself in a public environment, then I am not pushing out more media, instead I am trying to pull from media by treating media as a flexible thought rather than as a fixed definition. There are plenty of people in the huge world of peer review who can do the greatd work academic brilliance, but there is only one of me and therefore adoption is meaningless at a personal level without a personal frame of reference that focuses on adaptation - again apologies for the long screed, but what Howard Freeman said below was something I found personally inspiring, which triggered these thoughts.......M.

It's not about early adoption, as much as continuous innovation. think about it. doesn't matter if you are talking of twitter or fb.
-Des
http://techwatch.reviewk.com/